You can talk about guns at California state fairgrounds. You can advertise guns there, too. You can even, in the words of a gun rights group, host “a celebration of America’s gun culture.”
What you cannot do, according to a ruling today by a three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, is buy or sell a firearm on property owned by the state.
California gun laws “prohibit accepting an offer to sell firearms or ammunition on state property,” the panel ruled.
The ruling upholds California’s ban on gun sales on state property, dismissing a challenge from gun show operator Crossroads of the West. Crossroads of the West first sued in 2018 when one of California’s agricultural district associations barred gun shows at Del Mar Fairgrounds in San Diego County. In 2021, a new state law also barred gun sales at the state fairgrounds in Orange County.
Crossroads of the West sued over that law, and the cases were consolidated. As they wound their way through the courts, California passed a 2022 law barring all gun sales on state property.
In the meantime, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on a major gun case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which tossed out New York state regulations on who can carry a gun in public and threw California’s restrictive gun laws into chaos. Gov. Gavin Newsom has since proposed a new constitutional amendment restricting gun ownership.
The new ruling ends an injunction from a lower court that blocked the restriction on gun sales at fairgrounds.
“The restoration of my ban on gun shows on state properties — including most of the county fairgrounds sites that are owned by the state — will make us all safer,” said state Sen. Dave Min, an Irvine Democrat who advocates for the limits on gun…
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